


Meet Me Under the Mistletoe

by ChancellorGriffin



Series: Five Red Dresses: A Collection of Kabby Christmas Eve AU's [2]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1920s, Alternate Universe - Detectives, Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Noir, Christmas, Christmas Eve, Christmas Party, Christmas Smut, Detective Noir, F/M, Fluff and Smut, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-18
Updated: 2015-12-18
Packaged: 2018-05-07 11:47:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5455436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChancellorGriffin/pseuds/ChancellorGriffin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kane and the Blakes introduce Abby and Clarke to their favorite annual holiday tradition - the rip-roaring, boozed-up Grounder Christmas bash at Indra's speakeasy.  Sequel to the Kabby AU "The Seventh Heiress," set in Prohibition-era New York. Takes place five months later.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Meet Me Under the Mistletoe

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [The Seventh Heiress](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4323858) by [ChancellorGriffin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChancellorGriffin/pseuds/ChancellorGriffin). 



 To be totally honest with you, I'd never had a woman in my life long enough to have to worry about things like who spent Christmas where, and I wasn't sure I knew how the conversation was supposed to go. 

Abby had given up her apartment - too many sad, frightening memories after what happened to Jake - and had taken a new one on the other side of the park, where I spent occasional nights when she wasn't sleeping over at my place.  But for old time's sake, and because of how sparkling and festive it was, she'd checked herself and Clarke back into the Plaza for Christmas, and they were doing it up right with French champagne at breakfast and a glittery gold-trimmed tree in their suite.  Octavia and Bellamy and I were decidedly more downtown in our holiday traditions; we liked to eat corned beef sandwiches at the Jewish deli down the block and then head to Indra's.  She always threw a wild, rowdy Christmas Eve bash where cops rubbed elbows with Grounders, the moonshine flowed like water, and where if you made it to midnight without punching somebody or kissing somebody (or kissing someone and _then_ punching them, the way Raven usually did it) then you felt like a damned failure. 

Bellamy had described Indra's Christmas party to Clarke, who was wild with anticipation to come dance the foxtrot in a speakeasy full of Grounders, so Bellamy was taking her as his date.  They were having dinner with Octavia and Lincoln at Tavern on the Green and then making their way to the party, which technically began at eight but wouldn't really get hopping until around ten (and would stay hopping until dawn).  Meanwhile, I'd invited Abby to go with me.  I wasn't sure it was altogether her scene, but she seemed to like Indra (they'd established an odd kind of camaraderie after our adventures on the _Mount Weather)_ and besides, she still felt a little gun-shy about letting Clarke out of her sight for too long in crowds of strangers.  So I ate my corned beef sandwich alone at the deli, reading a book, wondering to myself if this was how parents always felt when their kids grew up and left the nest to spend Christmas without them. 

I went home after finishing my sandwich to change into the breathtakingly-expensive tuxedo Abby had bought me a few months ago.  She never exactly _said_ it was because my one good suit looked cheap next to her designer dresses, but the tailor and I were both men of the world with no illusions about each other, and we both silently understood exactly what was happening.  He spoke no English, but his raised eyebrow upon fingering my worn trouser cuffs spoke volumes, so I gritted my teeth and stood there patiently while the wealthiest woman in New York and an elderly European man played dress-up dolls on me.  At first, when we got the thing home and I spotted the invoice, I was horrified.  "You can't buy me this," I told her.  "This suit costs a year's rent on my apartment."  She waved my concerns away.  Sure enough, the thing more than earned its price tag a few nights later, when Abby took me with her to the opera.  (Or, more accurately, it earned its price tag when we got _home_ from the opera and Abby took it off me.)  Turns out, and they should teach you this in school, you put any man in a tuxedo and it'll make his woman look at him with the same starry-eyed expression he gets when she opens the front door in nothing but her underthings.  Abby _loved_ my tuxedo.  I didn't mind the cost one bit, after that.  Apparently it was Abby's very expensive, Italian-tailored present to herself.

She was dining with friends at the Plaza, and I'd promised to meet her there around nine-thirty so we could make our way to Indra's by ten.  But I'd planned on having the kids with me, which now of course I didn't, so my solitary Christmas dinner was over with pretty quickly and I was bored.  Being alone on Christmas when you're used to family makes you restless.  So I decided to head over a little early, and wait in the bar with a whiskey while she dressed if she wasn't ready when I got there.

Finn Collins was on duty at the concierge desk and waved me over to the elevators with a cheerful grin and a "Merry Christmas."  I made my way up to Abby's room and knocked.

The door opened.

She was ready, all right.

"You're early," she said in delight.  "I love that in a man."

I swallowed hard and couldn't quite figure out how to speak.

She was wearing a red dress, and Jesus Christ, what a dress it was.  Held up by the thinnest of straps - so delicate that I was afraid they'd snap under the force of my decidedly unchristian thoughts as I stared at that tantalizing expanse of bared throat and shoulder - it was a shimmering sea of scarlet beads that trembled with her every breath and movement.  She glittered in the hotel hallway's golden light like a living jewel.  Like the world's most beautifully-wrapped Christmas gift come to life.

(I'd always gotten in trouble, as a kid, for tearing my Christmas gifts open too quickly.)

"Come in," she said, holding the door open, and I followed her inside.  The rich floral scent of her French perfume mingled in the air with the smell of pine from the tree in the corner and the boughs strung along the mantle, and that plus the red dress was making me feel lightheaded with desire.  "Clarke left already, with Bellamy," she said, "which I'm sure you already knew."  She closed the door behind her with a decisive snap.  "So it's just you and me," she said, leaning back against the door with a secret little smile.  "And you're early.  What on _earth_ shall we do with this extra time?"

"That depends," I said in a low growl, moving closer to her.  "How much did that dress cost?"

“Why, you want one?” she laughed.  "I'm not sure red's your color."

I took another step closer, raking my eyes over the way its heavy, diamond-beaded folds clung lovingly to her hips and waist. Smart dress.  "No," I said, breathing in her intoxicating scent.  “I’m trying to calculate how many months’ salary I’ll be out if it gets torn when I rip it off you.”

“Oh, you’re in _that_ kind of mood, are you?” she laughed as I slipped one hand around her waist, pressing her up against the hotel room door.

“Baby, with you I’m always in that kind of mood.”

“Five thousand dollars,” she said as my hands ran up and down her bejeweled thighs, caressing the tiny beads in my fingertips. “It’s Chanel. Straight off the runway.”

“That adds up to an awful lot of cheating husbands and lost puppies,” I observed.

“And you with two hungry children to support,” she said sympathetically.

“They’re hardly children anymore.”

“But they do show up at all hours and eat all your food.”

“That’s true.”

“Well,” she sighed, “there’s no help for it, then.”

“What?”

She reached up and yanked off my tie.  "You better take me out of this dress before you put me back in it."  And then she kissed me.

I ran a hand along the beading just at the place where her thighs met, and heard her inhale sharply beneath my mouth.  My hands tangled in her hair, and hers in mine.  I felt her push my jacket off my shoulders and start in on my shirt buttons.  I slid my hands up her body, hungry to reach her breasts, but the heavy jeweled dress was like armor between my hands and her skin.  Like five-thousand-dollar armor I didn't exactly want added to my tab along with that suit. 

She pulled away from me just then, ever so slightly, and turned around, lifting her loose dark hair off her neck so I could reach the hook-and-eye clasp buried in the red silk, just between her shoulderblades.  I pressed my mouth against the place at the back of her neck where she most liked to be kissed, and she let out a contented little sigh, almost a purr, as I reached for the zipper. My hand was trembling, which the distant part of my brain still capable of conscious thought found amusing. This woman had been sharing my life and my bed for half a year and I _still_ turned into a nervous teenager when she let me undress her.  And I probably always would.

The straps slipped off her shoulders and she freed her arms so the cascade of red jewels could slither like a living creature off her body and pool beneath us on the floor. I stepped in closer (careful not to tread on the dress) and palmed her soft, full, white breasts in both my hands. She made that sound again, the purring sound, and that was the first moment it consciously occurred to me what my keen detective eye had entirely missed.

Abby had been naked underneath that dress.

“Jesus Christ, woman,” I murmured, burying my mouth in her throat. “What is this power you have over me?"

“No idea,” she said lightly, “it came with the dress.” And she stepped out of her heels and made her way over to the bed, where she stretched out luxuriously to watch me undress.  But I was too hungry to give her anywhere near the show she'd given me; it only took a few moments for me to shed the rest of the tuxedo in a heap on the floor beside her dress and practically leap into the bed beside her.

As she pulled my head down to kiss her again, I reached a hand down between her thighs. She was slippery and wet as a ripe peach, but warm too, almost hot, and she made soft, happy little sounds of pleasure as my fingers made their way in. I ran my other hand through her hair, looking down into those big dark eyes, and I thought about how in God’s name I’d gotten this lucky, how a guy like me - a scrappy Brooklyn ex-cop with a low-rent P.I. job and no respectable friends – had landed a dame like this who had casually stepped out of a five thousand dollar dress and climbed into bed with me on our way to a Christmas party.

It wasn’t just the way it felt when she kissed me, and touched me, and took me inside her. It wasn’t just about pleasure. It was about the way she looked at me, when I had her like this, the light in those big dark eyes, the way she gazed up at me as I held myself above her that said there was a part of her wondering how _she_ had gotten this lucky too.

I’m not a saint. There were women before, plenty of them. I did things with them and I liked it. It felt good. Sometimes it even felt amazing. But in my whole life nobody had ever looked at me the way Abby Griffin did when I touched her. Nobody had ever looked at me like I was such a precious, cherished thing. I hadn’t thought I could be any deeper in love with her than I was that first moment she walked into my office, but every time I touched her I realized I still had farther to fall.

My fingers sped up a little bit inside her, began working her a little more forcefully, and her hips rose a little off the bed to meet my hand, to pull it deeper.

“Marcus,” she whispered. “Baby, please.” Her voice sent shivers through my whole body. I kissed her then, rough and hard and urgent – I couldn’t stop myself – and moved until I was lying on top of her, my hands braced against the mattress on either side of her body.

“I like it when you call me baby,” I whispered into her ear as I pressed a hot kiss against the side of her neck. “Do it again.”

She reached up and tugged at my waist. “Come here, baby,” she said with a smile, and then slid her hand down between our bodies and guided me in.

It was always good, between us. I don’t mean to show off or anything, I’m just telling you how it was. It always worked, when we came together. But something was different tonight. Maybe it was the way the red beads had glowed against her skin, maybe it was Christmas, maybe it was the knowledge that she’d been headed to a party with nothing underneath her dress, in case she decided she wanted to pull me into a broom closet while the kids were dancing. I don’t know what it was. But it was magic. Everything felt better than it had ever felt. Everywhere her hands touched me, my skin caught fire. Every time I kissed her, her back arched off the mattress. I moved inside her, slow at first, savoring the electric sensations running through my body, but then it got harder and harder to restrain myself.

“More,” she murmured into my shoulder, and I gave her more, I gave her everything I had and I felt her whole body open up further and further to take it all. She sighed my name over and over as her hands clutched at my back, and when I finally burst inside her it was all I could do not to cry out so loud I’d wake up everyone in the hotel. She followed me over the edge a heartbeat later, muffling a wild cry as she pressed her mouth against my skin, and I held her trembling body against mine as we sank back down into the pillows.

For a long, long time, we just lay there in blissful silence, listening to each other breathe.  I could smell the rosewater scent of her hair as she curled up beside me, resting her head on my chest. 

“Good thing you were early,” she finally said with a contented sigh.  “I don't want to be late for the party, but I'd hate to have missed that."

"You know," I pointed out, "the kids won't get there for at least another half an hour.  Maybe longer.  And we can get to Indra's in five minutes if we take the hotel taxi."

“What are you saying, exactly?” she asked suspiciously as I disappeared under the covers.

“Lie back,” I said, my voice muffled by first the thick blankets and then something else entirely - something tart and sweet and wet and delicious that felt like heaven against my tongue.  Abby gave a sharp, keening moan and fisted her hands in my hair.  “Don't worry," I murmured.  "We still have plenty of time.”

* * *

We were late to the party.

By the time Abby and I finally managed to drag ourselves out of bed, put our clothes back on and run downstairs for a cab, it was nearly ten-thirty. Abby fixed her hair and lipstick in the car and helped me straighten my tie, but you didn’t have to be a detective to realize what we’d been up to – rumpled and clumsy and laughing like teenagers as we entered the bar. Mercifully, it was dark and crowded and noisy, and nobody was paying too much attention to us.

The bar was a solid crush of bodies, hazy with cigar smoke and the cacophony of scents rising out of the kitchen. (Indra’s cook went all out for Christmas.) I didn’t spot the kids, which was good, since it meant they hadn’t spotted us arriving late.

“Boss!” I heard Raven’s delighted voice ring out through the crowd, over the babble of voices and the loud music from the other room, where the jazz combo was playing above the dance floor. She elbowed her way through to us and took us each by the hand, leading us away from the door and deeper into the chaos. “When did you get here?”

“About half an hour ago,” shouted Abby over the din. Raven laughed.

“Liar,” she said. “You were late, and I know why. There’s lipstick on his collar.”

“Dammit,” I said, hunting frantically for the stain as Abby turned to me with wide panicked eyes.

“But how could – I wasn’t – “

And then we heard Raven laughing.

“ _Metaphorical_ lipstick,” she said, handing us each a drink and reaching up to finger my spotless white collar. “But thanks for confirming my suspicions about why you were late.”

“She’s quite the detective,” murmured Abby dryly, accepting the drink from Raven’s hand.

“Quite the pain in my ass, more like,” I muttered, glowering at her while she cackled in self-satisfaction.

“Oh, don’t worry,” she said, “I won’t tell your kids you were necking in the back of a taxicab.”

“Oh, you won’t? And how much is _that_ gonna cost me?”

“My drinks are on you all night,” she said.

“Goddamn extortionist.”

“And watch your back,” she tossed over her shoulder as she left us at the bar. “There’s mistletoe hidden everywhere. And I helped Indra hide it, so I know where it is.”

“Is that a threat?” I called after her, but she had vanished into the crowd.

“She bet Monty twenty-five dollars that she could catch you under the mistletoe at least once tonight,” said Jasper, who popped up from behind the bar so suddenly that he startled Abby nearly into dropping he drink.

“Oh Jesus,” I groaned. “She’s got _money_ on it? I’m doomed.”

“Not you,” Jasper grinned. “Her.”

“ _Me_?” asked Abby, startled.

“Rite of passage,” he explained. “She already got Clarke.” He pulled out a wicked-looking bottle labeled “Batch 227” and refilled her drink to the brim. “Welcome to the family,” he said. “And merry Christmas.”

I led Abby by the hand into the adjacent room, which seemed a breath less crowded only because it was so much larger. Gustus and his jazz trio were blowing “Meet Me Under the Mistletoe” on the tiny stage, and through the crowd I could see the kids on the dance floor, surrounded by a crowd. Clarke had stayed in touch with all the girls from the ship, and the Arbor cousins – Anya and Lexa – had come out to New York for Christmas with their family. They were dancing with a couple of Lincoln’s friends. Raven, Jasper and Monty were standing nearby, stuffing their faces with cake. Octavia and Lincoln were both terrific dancers, and it was a delight to watch them; beside them, Clarke was attempting to teach Bellamy, and it was going poorly. I watched Clarke execute a graceful two-step and then hold out her hand for Bellamy to try it. He stumbled into her a little, and caught her to keep her from falling. He was laughing like I’d never seen him laugh before, and something inside my heart turned over.

I pulled Abby into my arms and we fell into an easy rhythm.  She was as light-footed as her daughter, and I was no slouch either.  We were good together.

We were _really_ good together.

“What do you think about getting married?” I asked her suddenly.

“You mean as a general practice,” she asked, “or to you?”

“Let's say both.”

She grinned. The hand resting on my shoulder slid around to the back of my neck, drawing her in closer as we moved in time to the music.

“You thinking about marrying me for my money?”

“Well, obviously,” I agreed. “But there are other benefits too.”

“Such as?”

“Your considerable personal charms.”

“How gallant.”

“Not to mention what you’ve got underneath that red dress,” I said a little more quietly.

“You mean what I _don’t_ – “

“Shush,” I said, “the kids will hear you.”

She laughed.

“So what do you – “ I started to say, then realized she had completely stopped paying attention to me.

“Abby,” I began.

“Wait,” she said. “Look.”

“What?”

“Over there,” she said, “hanging from that chandelier.” And before I knew what she was doing, she was steering me – under the guise of dancing – towards the most crowded corner of the dance floor where Clarke was still trying valiantly to make a dancer out of Bellamy.

“Abby, I was kind of in the middle of –“

“Hush, this is important,” she said, waving me into silence, and before I could protest I realized exactly what she was up to.

Raven, her back to us, was refilling her glass of moonshine from a rickety side table off to the side of the dance floor – and right smack underneath a crystal chandelier, from which there hung a red-ribboned bouquet of mistletoe.

Abby marched up to her, tapped her on the shoulder, spun her around, and then – in front of her daughter, the Blake kids, half the Grounder clan and a total of about two hundred people, she planted a noisy, smacking kiss right on Raven’s mouth.

“Twenty-five dollars, please,” she said, holding out a hand to Monty.

"Do you take checks?"

"Not from criminals."

Monty laughed and pulled a wad of cash out of his pocket to place into her outstretched hand.  "Pleasure doing business," he said.

Through the crowd, my eyes met Clarke’s, and her expression was priceless – a combination of mortification, amusement, and a resigned shrug. I laughed. After a moment, so did she.

Abby folded up the twenty-five dollars and stuck it in my jacket pocket. “Hold this for me,” she said, as her arms wrapped around me again and I pulled her so close I could feel the pattern of the red beads on her dress pressing into my skin.

“Okay, but if you forget about it and it’s still there when I get home, I’m keeping it.”

“Oh, no you’re not,” she said. “I earned that fair and square. Rite of passage, that’s what the kid said. I’m in the family now.”

“There are easier ways,” I pointed out. “I offered you one just a minute ago, as a matter of fact, before you ran off to go kiss someone else.”

“Oh, I’m definitely going to marry you,” she said. “But you should also know that I never back down from a bet.”

Just then, we felt the music slow and soften, and the piano player broke into the opening notes of “O Holy Night.” I turned Abby towards the stage and pointed. “This is the best part,” I said, “we’re just in time.”

“For what?”

“Shhh,” I said. “Wait.”

And sure enough, out from the dark crowd of the dance floor, Indra stepped onto the stage. She was wearing a white silk dress that made her skin glow like Dutch chocolate, and Gustus stepped aside to let her stand alone in the glowing spotlight.

“Watch this,” I said, “you’re about to witness a Christmas miracle.” And sure enough, as it did every time – I never tired of this – the wild noisy chaos of laughing and shouting and clattering glassware and stomping feet fell silent. A hush, as thick as a blanket of winter snow, fell over the whole room, as Indra opened her mouth, took a breath, and began.

_“O holy night, the stars are brightly shining . . .”_

New York City was full of people who knew that Indra could snap a grown man’s arm, could pick a lock and crack a safe and shoot you dead from fifty paces. But only the people in this room knew that she could sing.

“What a voice,” murmured Abby at my side.

“Better every year,” I said admiringly. Abby leaned her head back against my chest and I wrapped my arms around her as we listened. Through the crowd I could see Lincoln holding Octavia the same way.

_“Fall on your knees, O hear the angel voices . . .”_

Every year the same rowdy crowd, drunk cops and low-level criminals, grifters and rum-runners and sharks of all stripes. Every year the noise and the chaos and the dancing and the endless rivers of moonshine flowing like water into our glasses, the fistfights and the kissing and the occasional smashed window. And every year, this one moment of perfect stillness and peace, where Indra’s rich, velvety voice soared up to the rafters and we all remembered a place we’d never been, an idea maybe, or a dream, some distant far-off sense of what Christmas was supposed to be or what it really meant or who we really were. And then she would finish the song and break the spell and we’d all go back to drinking, but with a lift in our hearts that wasn’t there before.

The song ended, as it always did, and as the hush was swallowed up by the usual thunderous applause, the spell broke. Indra disappeared into the crowd – she never stayed to take a bow, she didn’t want praise or compliments – and the noise level rose back up once more to deafening. But Abby didn’t move. She just stood there, leaning her head against my chest, and when I turned her around to face me, I could see that she was smiling and crying at the same time.

“This room is full of people who were willing to take a bullet for my daughter,” she said. “I didn’t know there were still people in the world like that.”

“To be fair,” I said, “they’re also mostly lying, cheating, stealing, smuggling thugs.”

“I don’t care,” she said, “I love them. I love all of them. I love your whole insane criminal family.”

I wrapped her in my arms and kissed the top of her head. “They’re _your_ insane criminal family now, too,” I said, and she laughed. “Last chance to back out,” I cautioned her, before I felt the strange sensation of something that felt like leaves brushing against my head. I reached up to bat it away, and saw Raven, fishing pole in hand, sitting with Jasper and Monty in one of the old box seats above the stage, her mouth full of cake, casually dangling a bundle of mistletoe on a string of fishing line directly over Abby’s head.

“You’re not getting your twenty-five dollars back!” Abby hollered up through the din of the crowd, and Raven laughed.

“This one’s on the house!” she shouted back. “Merry Christmas, you idiots.”

“She’s relentless,” observed Abby.

“She really is,” I agreed. “So we’d better give her a show. Are the kids watching?”

She looked over my shoulder, then shook her head. “No. They’re on the other side of the room.”

“Good,” I said, “they don’t need to see this.” And then I took Abby Griffin in my arms and kissed the living daylights out of her, to the sound of Raven, Monty and Jasper’s raucous applause.

**Author's Note:**

> Read the original fic here: http://archiveofourown.org/works/4323858
> 
> Listen to the Christmas playlist here: http://8tracks.com/grrlinthefireplace/meet-me-under-the-mistletoe


End file.
